Non-Editorializing

in “Poem Club”

Fox News, CNN, Jim Bob’s Manure and Chicken Plucking Farm Report—you cannot get away from the heaps and heaps of weeping, sobbing and generalized all around bubblegum brained babbling in content today. What in the hell has happened to good-ol’ persona removed reporting?!

As mentioned just recently; no one gives a furry rat’s behind, what your feelings and comments are. Just report the flippin’ story; concentrating on getting your details right, your butchering of the English language to a minimum. It’s “pled” not “pleaded” for cryin’ out friggin’ loud! And anyone who respects this fading language (“American” not really “English” any longer…thank gawd!) anyone who cares will agree. And I don’t give a r.f.a. what your idiot English teacher sez you’re allowed to degenerate tense down into. It’s still, “pled”!

Sorry for the segue…

When constructing a “poem,” one will notice, present tense seems to provide the most energy and draw the reader along far better than past tense. A good way to work into present tense is to utilize historic present tense (aka Homeric present-tense.) Most of the really fine journalist/literature authors utilize historic p.t.

   And even more evident in the more finely distilled wines—lack of a personal presence. The narrator does not include themselves in the scene.

Whenever possible, no first person usage. (First rule of “poem club.”)

   The Second rule of “poem club”: keep your opinions to yourself. No one wants to hear (have a piece ruined by) your input. Leave out anything, any goop that smacks of, I, me, mine, I believe, oh my gawd, such carnage, such action, this is horrifying,  such calm, oh the blood and the gore…, it was a beautiful sunny morning, god bless them, they lived happily ever after, etc. etc. Leave this sort of Thumper-and-Bambi tripe to Disney and the news bobble-heads and their cadre of apparently under-educated prompt writers.

   Consider the notable news commentators; Walter Cronkite, Charlie Rose, the Walter Winchells, their usual persona detachment from the story. Their professionalism. Not that they weren’t (aren’t) emotionally invested—they just stick to getting the facts across in an engaging manner and let the listener determine the emotional value and investment they wish to undertake for themselves. Telling readers what they should think and feel—wow! how grade-school is this. Show, not tell…

   All of these types of emotions and opinions are quite easily described within the confines of the story within the “poem” in a perfectly detached manner. And if they can’t be encapsulated in the verse, guess what? they’re not needed.

Mas Mtn. Dew,  Max tdc